One of my friends on the internet just now took to social media to challenge the world with the following truism: “Try as hard as you want, but you can’t make a duck look badass.” I don’t know what prompted this outburst (!) but I am willing to bet it had something to do with one of the abominable duck mascots which fill professional and semi-professional sports leagues with Howard the Duck-esque ugliness and horror (and, indeed, these doofy mascots never manage to look badass, no matter how hard the designers try).
Fortunately a greater force than the University of Oregon has taken up this challenge—and with much greater success. The red-breasted merganser (Mergus serrator) is a duck which lives throughout Siberia, Scandinavia, Scotland, Greenland, Iceland, Scotland, and the northern fastnesses of Canada (i.e. Canada). The predatory duck can sometimes be seen overwintering along the East and West coasts of America, the Chinese coast, Japan, the Koreas, England, Western Europe, or on the lakes and Inland Seas of Central Asia. In retrospect, the red-breasted merganser’s range includes most of the northern hemisphere except for the tropics and the extreme north—which should give you a clue as to what a badass the duck truly is. The ducks fly north in summer to breed on lakes, rivers, and coasts. In winter they live in coastal waters or in the open ocean.

Red Breasted Mergansers relaxing in their warm winter home–the open waters of Lake Erie (photo by Jim McCormac)
Merganser serrator has a ferocious appearance. The male has a black spikey crest, blood-red eyes, and a pointy black beak filled with needle sharp serrations (with a hook at the end). Oh, also his feet are incarnadine color with razor claws. The female has a similar shape, but her head is drab colored and she does not have the bright white ringneck and signal feathers of the male. The ducks are entirely predatory—they only eat living things. The adults catch all sorts of small water creatures including aquatic arthropods, amphibians, mollusks, and worms, but most of all they live on fish. The ducks dive down into the water and hunt the fish directly, so they are stupendous swimmers.
The ducks brood between 5 and 13 eggs. A day after they hatch the nestlings take to the water…and to the hunt! Ducklings feed themselves without help from their parents, although they tend to eat aquatic insect larvae and tadpoles (at first). To recapitulate, the red-breasted merganser lives in Siberia and North Korea or on the open ocean. It eats only living things which are caught and swallowed alive and whole into its inescapable mouth of needles. Make fun of mascots, all you like, but respect the living sawbills!
8 comments
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January 12, 2015 at 11:36 PM
GarryRogers
Won’t mess with him!
January 13, 2015 at 9:50 PM
Wayne
Good idea–especially if you’re a fish! 🙂
January 13, 2015 at 11:44 AM
Val
Much as I applaud your granting badass status to the glorious Merganser, I must take issue with the singling out of Canada, in a list that includes Scandinavia and SIberia(!) for being so “northern”. Why, when it extends from the same latitude as southern France to that of Alaska does Canada deserve such simplistic categorization I wonder? Not that there’s anything wrong with being a northern country as such, but I do tire of the stereotype.
January 13, 2015 at 9:50 PM
Wayne
I’m sorry to pick on Canada, but with its high standard of living, affordable health care, excellent education system, well-maintained infrastructure, and happy populace it is simply too easy a target for mockery…wait, no, maybe that’s the other way around.
January 14, 2015 at 4:50 PM
Val
Nice recovery! I am very much mollified.
January 16, 2015 at 3:19 PM
Wayne
[I am secretly bitter, because every trip I have planned to Canada has gone horribly wrong and I have never been there]
January 15, 2015 at 7:18 AM
Beatrix
I did think of Sid Vicious when I saw the photo.
January 19, 2015 at 7:45 PM
Wayne
I am looking for the punk emoticon in order to respond to this properly…